Dr. Mireia Fernández-Ardèvol, Dr. Andrea Rosales, and researchers from the Sapienza University of Rome and the Academy of Costume and Fashion of Rome coauthor a new paper titled “‘I do it my way’: Idioms of practice and digital media ideologies of adolescents and older adults.” The paper has been recently published in SAGE’s “New Media & Society,” a highly ranked journal in the field of Communication. This work, which compares young and older age groups in two cultural settings, derives from the project “Ageism and social media through the lens of the media ideologies: An exploratory research,” funded by LUMSA University of Rome and the ACT Project.
Abstract: This article analyzes the idioms of practice and media ideologies of adolescents and older adults regarding mobile digital media usage, and how they are negotiated within and between age cohorts. We formed aged-based focus groups in Rome and Barcelona (four groups of 16- to 19-year-olds and four of 65- to 85-year-olds). The comparison provides new insights on older individuals’ communication practices, often overshadowed by the focus on youth. Participants of both age groups explained they do media in their own way, which is perceived as “the right” (or legitimate) way. Strategies and hierarchies differ with age, according to meanings and rankings attributed to media choices in a communicative environment of affordances, or polymedia. The results suggest that differentiated generation-based idioms of practice and media ideologies are in operation in each cohort while, in both cases, refer to adaptative and goal-oriented communications.
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